When Ransomware Becomes a Civic Emergency: What Cities Must Learn from St. Paul
When ransomware hits a city, it stops being an IT story and becomes a public safety problem. In 2025, St. Paul, Minnesota gave us a template for what that escalation looks like. When “IT Outage” Turns into a State of Emergency On July 25, 2025, St. Paul began detecting suspicious activity on its internal networks, […]
Turning a Free Risk Assessment Into Your Client Security Language (Not Just a Compliance Check)
Most MSPs don’t have a language problem with security; they have a translation problem. The Blacksmith Free Risk Assessment gives you a single, reusable grammar you can use to talk about both compliance and security with non‑technical clients in a way that sticks. The problem: no shared language with clients When you walk into a QBR and start talking […]
NIST’s AI Risk Management Framework: What It Is, Why It Exists, and What MSPs Should Know
Artificial intelligence is exploding into every corner of business, but most organizations are still treating AI risk like a side quest instead of part of core governance. The NIST AI Risk Management Framework (AI RMF) is an attempt to fix that by giving a structured, technology‑agnostic way to think about AI risks across the entire […]
Blacksmith Wins Channel Program Q4 Category Leader Badge
Blacksmith was again awarded the Channel Program’s Category Leader badge, a distinction reserved for the top-rated vendors in the IT channel across more than 80 technology categories! Which Categories Did We Lead? Blacksmith was awarded this badge in the following: Category Leader: Automation Category Leader: Data Privacy, Governance, & Risk Category Leader: Risk & Compromise […]
Operational Ransomware: When Uptime Becomes the Real Crown Jewel
Ransomware is increasingly about stopping a business from functioning, not just stealing or encrypting files. The sectors feeling this most acutely are healthcare, manufacturing, managed service providers, and critical services where every minute of downtime carries a real human or economic cost. When “just” data loss isn’t the point In today’s big-game ransomware operations, the […]
KEV-Driven Patching and “Emergency Directive Fatigue”
Stop chasing every CVE headline; build a KEV-first, risk-based patch playbook If it feels like you’ve been living in a permanent “drop everything and patch” sprint for the last five years, you’re not imagining it. Every week ships a new “critical” CVE, a vendor blast, and at least one headline implying that if you don’t patch […]
Building a Digital Trust Architecture: Moving Beyond Isolated Controls
We’ve said it (and you’ve heard it) many times now: digital trust has become table stakes for doing business. At its core, digital trust is the confidence that systems, data, and interactions are secure, reliable, and respectful of users and their rights. As organizations lean into AI, automation, and always-on digital services, they need more […]
Turn Compliance Into a Core MSP Offering, Not an Add-On
Compliance Is the New Growth Engine For years, most MSPs treated compliance like an annoying side quest: something you help with begrudgingly when a client’s cyber insurer or auditor sends over a questionnaire. That model is breaking down. Buyers are no longer satisfied with “we keep things patched” as an answer when their board, regulator, […]
Building A “Green IT” Offering Your SMB Clients Will Actually Pay For
Green IT has shifted from “nice to have” to a buying criterion, especially for younger, growth‑minded SMBs. Sustainability is now showing up in MSP trend reports as both a differentiator and a way to justify premium service tiers when it is tied directly to cost savings and risk reduction. Why SMBs Will Pay For Green […]
Surviving Supply-Chain Ransomware As An MSP
Supply‑chain ransomware has turned MSPs into high‑value dominoes: hit one provider, get dozens of downstream victims as a bonus. In this article, we’ll discuss how to defend your own house, constrain vendor blast radius, and explain the risk in plain English to SMBs. Why MSPs Are Now Prime Targets MSPs sit in the middle of […]